Mystic Mikester is my latest reinvention as a long-time sociopolitical content creator and trusted servant in recovery. As my political awakening and spiritual awakening have progressed, they have gradually merged into a profound and urgent awareness that humanity has made ourselves sick with generations of abuse, and if we don't dive into some deep healing ASAP, we might wipe ourselves out completely.
My Story
I weave personal storytelling throughout my content, so I'll keep it brief here. I was raised by religious fundamentalists who saw violence against children as good parenting and taught me to hate myself for being queer. I loved to read, did great at school, and marched in the band—but it wasn't enough to overcome the poisoning of my mind.
By the time I hit eighteen, I was a ticking time bomb of resentment, rage, insecurity, and self-loathing. Meth was a popular party drug in the '90s, so you can imagine how the first twenty years of my adult life went. By the time I entered recovery in 2012, I'd heaped plenty of self-destruction on top of those childhood traumas. And so my spiritual journey began.
My Worldview
I think it's really important at the societal level that we keep a separation of spirituality from the state apparatus. What I mean is that our practices can't be binding on other people—political structures have to serve everyone, not just people like us. Ironically, this is rooted in my spiritual awareness of the oneness of all things. And that's the paradox, right?
At the personal level, our spirituality is inseparable from our worldview. When I think about my responsibilities as a citizen, as a steward of the planet, as a member of organizations I depend on, I do that from the wholeness of my being. My mental model of the world is constructed of information I've drawn from all kinds of inspirations, and I use them all when I make decisions.
It's both deeply human, and profoundly destructive, to conflate the need for unity with a demand for uniformity. Those are not the same; in fact, they're antithetical. Political theories of liberation rely on ideological uniformity just as much as religious ones do. How do we work together to solve collective problems without falling into the trap of demanding personal conformity?
One With All Things
When I say “spirituality,” I mean to include atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists, and that might surprise some people. For me, that kind of radical inclusivity is entailed by the idea of oneness. Anyone experiencing consciousness with a human brain has to grapple with the existential complexity of that.
Spirituality seems to be a universal human experience—it has shown up in every culture across all of history. And I think that's because anyone who has lived inside a human brain has had to contend with how hard that is and reach into a deep well of inner strength to meet that challenge.
People who reject the concept of the divine still face this, and they do it with therapy, philosophy, self-help, and more. Spiritual people use these tools too, and we also tap into mythologies and storytelling associated with our frameworks that are rich with symbols and archetypes and lessons that help us grow.
None of us are exempt from this aspect of human life. We're all responsible for cultivating our own character, and holding ourselves accountable for how our choices impact others.
This Project
Mystic Mikester is my attempt to share my experience as a unit of human consciousness at this major inflection point in history. Like all of us, I'm trying to make sense of an avalanche of information through a limited human lens. Tapping into cosmic strength helps me with that—from everyday challenges to the biggest existential questions.
We are living through a great technological leap forward, and a potentially catastrophic political upheaval. For me, spirituality is utterly pointless if it doesn't have practical benefits for my quality of life. I do the difficult work of tending to my spiritual health because it makes a real-world difference for me and the people around me. I've seen how religion made all these problems worse, yet I've experienced how spirituality helped me cope with them.
It feels to me like I'm not the only one tapping into something greater than myself to cope with this. And when people go out seeking, I don't want them to stumble back into the same old religious structures that got us into this mess. We are interconnected, and when too many of us are suffering without a solution to the torment of being alive in a world full of pain that we aren't taught to deal with, we all suffer.
We Write The Future
We're facing some really big problems together, and our best shot at meeting those challenges with collective strength and wisdom is to cultivate the best in ourselves. I don't need you to believe the same thing as me for us both to be doing that. So this project is not about presenting specific aspects of my framework as “truth.”
For me, spiritual truth isn't in the stories and the symbols and the sacred texts themselves. It isn't outside of us at all. The deepest core essence of “The Truth” is the light that comes on inside of us when we tap into the frameworks that resonate most with us and let them remind us that our light was always there.
The Common Good
I believe what's best for all of us is what's best for each one of us. The questions we ask ourselves at the personal level sound different at the collective level, but they're still the same question. How do we make sure there's enough to eat? A safe place to sleep? A future for our descendants? How do we thrive and not merely survive?
I hope you get something out of what I'm doing here. I hope you come to know in your very core how much you matter to the people around you and how important it is to cultivate a healthy inner state for the good of all. My life is made better when you improve yourself, just as yours is improved by mine.
Together our strength can and will and must add up to great and powerful healing that can move the mountain of suffering that is hanging over our world. Let's go!
